Week 12

Friday:
ELA: Today, we went through what a narrative writing piece is and is not. We learned that narrative pieces are about our lives BUT is focused only on one event, not our whole life story. Students were given time to brainstorm which prompt they wanted to focus on and created a list of story ideas from their own lives.

B2T: Students were partnered up and given time to go back to chapters 10 and 11 to pull evidence about 3 different questions. Monday, they will compare their text evidence to evidence from the movie clip.

SS:
We have this AWESOME new, online resource for SS called the Discovery Education Techbook. It is a highly interactive online "textbook" that has almost any topic in history you can think of. Today, we did a trial run of how the site is set up for the students and we practiced with a map activity about different explorers. Students seemed to really enjoy the way the site was set up and the lesson we tried out. Bravo Discovery.com! We will be using this site frequently throughout the rest of the year and they will start using it this week to research an explorer for their final project before Thanksgiving break.

Click here for a video showing how the techbook works!

Thursday
ELA:
Word Work: As a team, we have decided to put a hold on WW until after Thanksgiving break. The students will be working on their summative writing piece. I will be walking them through how to write a narrative story effectively. They are able to choose from 3 different prompts:
1. Write a personal narrative about a difficult or challenging time in your life.
2. Write a personal narrative about a time you did something fun or special.
3. Write a narrative that tells an exciting story.
Over the next two weeks, we will be taking this process on step at a time and building off the day before.

B2T:
SS:
Today, we finished talking about the Columbian Exchange and how it impacted the old and new world. The students were given the rest of the class period to practice their US geography skills on this website.



Wednesday

ELA:
Word Work: Today, we jumped into our words and learned how to use the inflectional ending -ing with one syllable words. When the word has one syllable and is a VC base word, then you double the last letting before adding -ing. Example: get = getting (one syllable and the -et makes it a VC base word). We spent the majority of the time practicing with these one syllable words and adding the ending to them.

B2T: We finished up writing our Chapter 10 quick write. Overall, students did very well with the writing process. This biggest struggle is with the mechanics, such as spelling, punctuation, homophones, etc., but they are doing very well with pulling text evidence to support their response. Afterwards, we read ch. 11 whole class and what a tear-jerking chapter it was! One of our beloved characters, Leslie Burke, died from a creek accident. Some students already knew the plot twist, but it was interesting to hear the students' responses to this event in the book regardless of whether they had known or not.

SS:
Students were given time today to continue working on their responses to the Columbian Exchange activity. They activity focused on finding the positive and negative effects of the trade and responding to a writing prompt using the positives and negatives in their answer.


Tuesday

ELA: Word Work: Today we focused on a mini lesson for idioms. Can you explain what the idiom means based on the picture? Students did well with this task! Some were harder than others but we figured them out together. We will be continuing our study of attaching the inflectional ending -ing to base words. This sort will include VVC (Vowel, Vowel, Consonant), VCC, VCEdrop and a new one VC (this will apply to one syllable words). The VC base words will need their last letter to be doubled before adding -ing. Here is the attachment of the sort words:

For B2T, we are continuing our writing pieces for Chapter 10. Students will assess their work and conference with me to ensure they are writing with their best effort! We will continue reading chapter 10 once we are all finished with the quick write.

SS: We learned about the Columbian Exchange today through some kinesthetic learning activities! After all of that sugar from Halloween still running through their veins, we figure they need some movement!
Activity 1: Each student was given a card with a food on it. In their graphic organizer, they had to write whether or not they think the food is from the Old World (Europe) or the New World (Americans). As they were passing the cards, it was interesting to see who connected the food smelling activity we did yesterday to their thinking today. After time was called, we went over the food cards whole class.

Activity 2: Each student was given a card with the name of a food on it. One side of the room was given Old World food items and the other side was given New World food items. The students were told they could trade cards among  their group only. I gave them 3 minutes to get up, mingle and bargain with their World group. When I called time, I explained we would now trade within both Worlds. We went silently out to the common area and the students held their cards in front of them. The whole activity was SILENT which they handled VERY well! If they wanted to trade, they pointed at that person and the other person would either nod or shake their head to communicate if they wanted to trade or not. After the 3 minutes, I had them line up by the lockers and turn over their cards. The students with an x on their card stepped out. I asked them "What else was traded between the cultures besides food?" Disease was the word we agreed upon. The 7 students with x's have to dramatically but silently die from their disease. We continued our discussion about why some people died and how there were positive and negative effects from trade for BOTH cultures.

If you want to purchase Activity 1, you can find it here!

For a FREE copy of Activity 2 click here!

Monday

ELA: Word Work: Students took their Vocab Sort 3 assessment! I am excited to see how they did this time around. They knocked the last one out of the park! In B2T today, we started reading chapter 10 titled "The Perfect Day". We stopped after reading a few pages to begin responding to our quick write: Explain why you think Jesse did not invite Leslie on the trip. Think about Jess’ words, actions and thoughts. Justify your answer by citing specific evidence from the text. I have created a quick write rubric for the students to use to assess themselves on how they did in their writing. I have attached a picture of it below so you can see what is expected of your child in terms of writing. If students rate themselves below a 4, I have them go back and fix that area to make it be 4pt material.

SS: We had a blast today learning about the new world smells! We shared our background knowledge about European Explorers and then jumped into a "smelly" activity. Each group was given 9 cups that had a new world food in it. The cups were covered in foil and holes were poked in the tops so they could smell the delicious new food smells! They took turns smelling each cup and recording what food they thought it was. I attached pictures of the foods below.